Three killed in blast at Posco site

KENDRAPADA: At least three persons were killed and two others injured in a bomb blast in Posco project area in Jagatsinghpur district on Saturday evening, police said.

"A bomb went off at Patna village under Dhinkia panchayat. We have information about three deaths so far," Jagatsinghpur SP Satyabrata Bhoi told TOI over phone. Police were yet to identity the deceased till the filing of this report.

Police sources said a group of around eight to 10 persons were making the crude bombs behind the residence of one Sura Das when one of them went off accidentally at around 7.30 pm. While two persons died on the spot, another succumbed to injuries at Kujang hospital. The two injured persons were said to have sustained serious burn injuries.

Bhoi said police are investigating into the incident. Sources said those involved in making the bombs were amateurs. Police and forensic teams went to the spot for a first-hand assessment of the situation while the village was tense.

Dhinkia panchayat has been in the forefront of the movement against the government's land acquisition process for the proposed 12-million-tonne integrated steel plant project by Posco with anti-Posco protesters putting up a stiff resistance for quite some time.

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident


LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.


In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.


"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."


The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.


On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.


In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.


Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.


In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.


The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.


Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.


For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."


David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.


Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.


Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.


"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.


WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.


Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.


"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.


Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.


"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.


In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."


Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.


Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.


Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.


"I'm enraged," he said.


___


Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.


__


Online:


WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb


Read More..

Sequester Begins But Govt. Shutdown Looks Unlikely





Mar 1, 2013 4:13pm


ap obama boehner split nt 121231 wblog Sequester Begins But Government Shutdown Looks Unlikely

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Imag


It may not be readily obvious from the blizzard of news out there today on the “sequester,” but a government shutdown became significantly less likely today, even as the automatic budget cuts barreled ahead toward reality.


What happened? Both sides – Republicans and Democrats – basically seem to have agreed that as they will continue to fight out the $85 billion in automatic budget cuts starting to take effect today, they will not allow that disagreement to jeopardize full funding for the federal government. That funding is now scheduled to expire March 27.


RELATED: President Obama, Congressional Leaders Fail to Avert Sequester Cuts


After the White House meeting this morning, House Speaker John Boehner said he would have the House vote next week to fund the full government – what’s known as a “continuing resolution.”


Boehner: “I did lay out that the House is going to move a continuing resolution next week to fund the government past March 27th, and I’m hopeful that we won’t have to deal with the threat of a government shutdown while we’re dealing with the sequester at the same time. The House will act next week, and I hope the Senate will follow suit.”


READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester


Boehner’s office provided this read-out of the meeting: “The president and leaders agreed legislation should be enacted this month to prevent a government shutdown while we continue to work on a solution to replace the president’s sequester.”


The president was asked at his mini-news conference whether he would definitely sign such a bill, even if it keeps government going at the new, lower spending levels as this fight is resolved (or not).


RELATED: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester


Obama’s response: “With respect to the budget and keeping the government open – I’ll try for our viewing audience to make sure that we’re not talking in Washington gobbledygook. What’s called the continuing resolution, which is essentially just an extension of last year’s budget into this year’s budget to make sure that basic government functions continue, I think it’s the right thing to do to make sure that we don’t have a government shutdown. And that’s preventable.”


So even as we moved toward the brink of sequester, the nation’s leaders took a step back from another, much larger cliff.



SHOWS: World News







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Zionism row casts cloud over Kerry's Turkey visit






ANKARA: US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks with Turkey's leaders on the Syria crisis Friday amid a row over comments by the Turkish premier branding Zionism a "crime against humanity."

"Obviously we disagree with that, we find it objectionable," Kerry said at a joint press conference in Ankara, referring to a speech delivered by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that likened Zionism to fascism and anti-Semitism.

Kerry said he would raise the issue "very directly" with Erdogan and express Washington's hopes to see the two "vital allies" work together.

He met later Friday with Erdogan and had a "respectful but frank discussion of the prime minister's speech in Vienna," a senior State Department official said.

"The Secretary made US concerns very clear. The US and Turkish side agreed to stay in very close touch about the whole range of related issues, including their shared commitment to Middle East peace," the official said..

The top US diplomat's visit to Turkey came a day after Washington announced that it would for the first time provide direct aid to Syrian rebels in the form of food and medical supplies as well as $60 million in extra assistance to the political opposition.

But the discussions were overshadowed by renewed tension between Turkey and Israel, two major US allies, following comments Erdogan made earlier this week at a UN-sponsored forum in Vienna.

"As is the case for Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it is inevitable that Islamophobia be considered a crime against humanity," Erdogan said on Wednesday.

Kerry said it was essential for Turkey and Israel to rekindle their "historic cooperation" but the situation got more complicated "in the aftermath of the speech that we heard in Vienna."

Turkish-Israeli relations have remained in free fall since Israeli troops raided a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship in 2010, killing nine people.

"We have never made any hostile remarks against any nation," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in response to a question over Erdogan's remarks.

"If you want to talk about hostile you can call Israel's attitude that, after it killed nine civilians on high seas," he added.

"If some countries acted in a hostile way against our citizens' right to life, allow us to reserve our right to make a statement."

The incident strained bilateral military and diplomatic ties and left Washington in a bind to mend relations between its two key allies in the region.

Erdogan's comments were branded as "a dark and mendacious statement," by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while Washington said "characterisation of Zionism as a crime against humanity... is offensive and wrong."

A US official travelling with Kerry on his first trip abroad since taking over as secretary of state from Hillary Clinton said Washington was "dismayed" to hear Erdogan's remarks.

"This was particularly offensive frankly," said the official who requested anonymity.

Dealing with Syria, terrorism

As part of their agenda, Kerry and Davutoglu also discussed the nearly two-year civil war in neighbouring Syria which has killed at least 70,000 people according to the UN.

"Together we work to strengthen the Syrian opposition so that we are in a position now to be able to do more," Kerry said, adding that the US and Turkey were trying to reduce the money "flowing to Assad regime's war machine."

"There is no legitimacy in a regime that commits atrocity against its own people," he said.

Turkey, once a close ally of Syria, has joined the United States in its campaign to oust the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and has given shelter to Syrian rebels and to nearly 200,000 refugees along its volatile border.

In January, the US began deploying Patriot missiles, along with Germany and the Netherlands, as part of a NATO mission to protect Turkey from any spillover of the Syrian conflict.

Turkey had requested the measure after several cross-border shelling incidents, including one in October that killed five civilians.

Kerry also attended a memorial ceremony in Ankara, in honour of the US embassy guard who was killed in a February 1 suicide attack claimed by the fiercely anti-US Marxist group the Revolutionary People's Liberation Front (DHKP-C).

"The United States stands strongly with Turkey, our NATO ally, in the fight against terrorism in all its forms," including DHKP-C, al-Qaeda and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Kerry said.

Also on the agenda during the talks was Washington's pressure for increasing sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear programme.

-AFP/ac



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India increases aid to Sri Lanka

CHENNAI: Even as the anti-Sri Lanka mood in Tamil Nadu is getting more belligerent, the Centre has increased its annual grant to the island nation in the Union Budget. The allocation has gone up to Rs 500 crore for 2013-2014 from Rs 290 crore last year. It was Rs 181.94 crore in 2011-2012. The Budget has allocated Rs 5,550 crore as aid for foreign governments and organizations.

The grants for Sri Lanka are meant for rehabilitation of internally displaced Tamils, but parties in Tamil Nadu have accused the government there of diverting the Indian aid for other purposes. The issue could be raised again with the two main Dravidian parties, the ruling AIADMK and the opposition DMK, using it to corner the UPA government. The move comes at a time when political parties in the state have stepped up their offensive against the Lankan government for alleged war crimes.

Recently, UK's Channel 4 had released pictures allegedly showing Balachandran, son of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, minutes before and after he was killed towards the end of the decades-long civil war in 2009. Former Indian ambassador to Italy K P Fabian pointed out that increasing the grant to Sri Lanka was important. "It is not only in the interest of Sri Lanka. It is also in our interest. The Indo-Sri Lanka relationship is important." Sri Lanka should also understand that there is a growing international concern about the manner in which it has dealt with the Tamil question, he said.

Under the non-plan category, the Indian government has proposed to donate Rs 4,143 crore to various foreign governments and organizations, besides Rs 1,406 crore under the plan category to Afghanistan, Bhutan and Myanmar. But unlike 2012-13, when the government allocated Rs 550 crore to Bhutan and Maldives, in the budget for 2013-14, there is no loan component to any country and all the money is treated as grant alone.

Prof V Suryanarayana, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Asian Studies, said India has committed to help the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka in recent years. "Housing scheme and other development projects have been announced by the Indian government with the good intention of helping Tamils," Suryanarayana told TOI. But most of the projects have been getting delayed due to 'non-cooperative attitude' of the Sri Lankan government, he said. "For instance, housing for internally displaced Tamils have been delayed due to non-allotment of land by the local government," Suryanarayana said.

He also pointed to the speedy progress of Chinese projects in Sri Lanka. "The projects of the Chinese government are being completed quickly with the co-operation of the Sri Lankan government," he said.

In another strategic move, the Centre has increased grants for all the neighboring countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The Indian government has not allocated any aid for Pakistan for the last three years. "It is important for India to promote development in its neighbourhood in SAARC region as well as African nations. Allocating funds to neighbours is not to compete with China. In our own foreign policy, we have expanded system of technical and financial assistance in recent years," said Fabian.

Read More..

WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident


LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.


In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.


"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."


The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.


On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.


In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.


Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.


In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.


The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.


Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.


For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."


David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.


Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.


Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.


"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.


WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.


Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.


"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.


Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.


"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.


In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."


Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.


Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.


Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.


"I'm enraged," he said.


___


Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.


__


Online:


WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb


Read More..

Obama Admin to Court: End Calif. Gay Marriage Ban











In a historic argument for gay rights, President Barack Obama on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to overturn California's same-sex marriage ban and turn a skeptical eye on similar prohibitions across the country.



The Obama administration's friend-of-the-court brief marked the first time a U.S. president has urged the high court to expand the right of gays and lesbians to wed. The filing unequivocally calls on the justices to strike down California's Proposition 8 ballot measure, although it stops short of the soaring rhetoric on marriage equality Obama expressed in his inaugural address in January.






Justin Sullivan/Getty Images








California is one of eight states that give gay couples all the benefits of marriage through civil unions or domestic partnership but don't allow them to wed. The denial of marriage to same-sex couples, "particularly where California at the same time grants same-sex partners all the substantive rights of marriage, violates equal protection," the administration said.



The administration's position, if adopted by the court, would likely result in gay marriage becoming legal in the seven other states: Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island.



In the longer term, the administration urges the justices to subject laws that discriminate on sexual orientation to more rigorous review than usual, a standard that would imperil other state bans on same-sex marriage.



The brief marks the president's most expansive view of gay marriage and signals that he is moving away from his previous assertion that states should determine their own marriage laws. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, signed off on the administration's legal argument last week following lengthy discussions with Attorney General Eric Holder and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.



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Facebook buys advertising firm from Microsoft






SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook agreed Thursday to buy Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft as part of an effort to boost ad revenues at the massive social network.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Atlas is a leader in campaign management and measurement for marketers and agencies. We believe this acquisition will benefit both marketers and users," Facebook's Brian Boland said in a blog post.

Atlas was part of the aQuantive group acquired by Microsoft, which ended up in a writedown and loss for Microsoft last year.

Microsoft's Dave O'Hara said the deal "will strengthen our existing partnership" with Facebook "for the benefit of both companies and their respective long-term visions."

Facebook has become the world's biggest social network with more than one billion users, but its stock has been hit by concerns about its ability to boost revenues and profitability.

The California group has been working on a number of advertising initiatives for both desktop and mobile Facebook applications.

Facebook shares rose 1.4 percent to end Thursday at $27.25.

- AFP/ac



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Sariska villagers block tourists’ entry

ALWAR: About 2,500 villagers on Thursday blocked the main entrance of the Sariska Tiger Reserve, protesting their relocation from areas near the sanctuary.

Sariska field director RS Shekhawat said the villagers had locked the entrance and didn't allow tourists to enter the park. "We are trying to sort out the problem on a priority basis," Shekhawat said.

The villagers, who are on an indefinite sit-in, said they would not clear the blockade unless their demands were met. This is the third such protest in the past eight months against the relocation plan.

Tension began in Sariska when about 2,500 people from 50 villages gathered for a mahapanchayat against the alleged "cheating" by the district administration. "We had called off the agitation in May last year when the district administration agreed on some of our demands including lifting ban on the registry of land, construction of a concrete road and earmarking a grazing area. But now they have backtracked on the promise citing the Supreme Court orders," said Jaikishan Gujjar, a villager.

Since 2008, the farmers in the periphery of the reserve have been protesting the state government and wildlife authorities' decision to relocate them. On February 20, villagers thrashed a few senior sanctuary officials when 70 cattle were seized while grazing in the sanctuary area.

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Huge study: 5 mental disorders share genetic links


WASHINGTON (AP) — The largest genetic study of mental illnesses to date finds five major disorders may not look much alike but they share some gene-based risks. The surprising discovery comes in the quest to unravel what causes psychiatric disorders and how to better diagnose and treat them.


The disorders — autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia — are considered distinct problems. But findings published online Wednesday suggest they're related in some way.


"These disorders that we thought of as quite different may not have such sharp boundaries," said Dr. Jordan Smoller of Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the lead researchers for the international study appearing in The Lancet.


That has implications for learning how to diagnose mental illnesses with the same precision that physical illnesses are diagnosed, said Dr. Bruce Cuthbert of the National Institute on Mental Health, which funded the research.


Consider: Just because someone has chest pain doesn't mean it's a heart attack; doctors have a variety of tests to find out. But there's no blood test for schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. Instead, doctors rely on symptoms agreed upon by experts. Learning the genetic underpinnings of mental illnesses is part of one day knowing if someone's symptoms really are schizophrenia and not something a bit different.


"If we really want to diagnose and treat people effectively, we have to get to these more fine-grained understandings of what's actually going wrong biologically," Cuthbert explained.


Added Mass General's Smoller: "We are still in the early stages of understanding what are the causes of mental illnesses, so these are clues."


The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, a collaboration of researchers in 19 countries, analyzed the genomes of more than 61,000 people, some with one of the five disorders and some without. They found four regions of the genetic code where variation was linked to all five disorders.


Of particular interest are disruptions in two specific genes that regulate the flow of calcium in brain cells, key to how neurons signal each other. That suggests that this change in a basic brain function could be one early pathway that leaves someone vulnerable to developing these disorders, depending on what else goes wrong.


For patients and their families, the research offers no immediate benefit. These disorders are thought to be caused by a complex mix of numerous genes and other risk factors that range from exposures in the womb to the experiences of daily life.


"There may be many paths to each of these illnesses," Smoller cautioned.


But the study offers a lead in the hunt for psychiatric treatments, said NIMH's Cuthbert. Drugs that affect calcium channels in other parts of the body are used for such conditions as high blood pressure, and scientists could explore whether they'd be useful for psychiatric disorders as well.


The findings make sense, as there is some overlap in the symptoms of the different disorders, he said. People with schizophrenia can have some of the same social withdrawal that's so characteristic of autism, for example. Nor is it uncommon for people to be affected by more than one psychiatric disorder.


___


Online:


http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60223-8/abstract


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